


Memory

by enemyfrigate



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009)
Genre: Amnesia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-17
Updated: 2011-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-24 17:10:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/265886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enemyfrigate/pseuds/enemyfrigate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the boys meet again, post-Origins, Logan wonders if Gambit is the key to his lost past.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Memory

The door bell jangled from the front hall, interrupting Logan’s garage-bound trajectory. He detoured to the door, but Storm beat him to it. She’d been laying in wait in the sitting room, looked like.

The shadow on the other side of the glass was man-shaped. Must be someone special, Logan thought, and waited to be introduced, so he could tease her about this guy later.

Yep, a guy. Tallish, good looking, well dressed. Logan poised himself for mockery.

“Remy, finally,” said Storm. She embraced the guy and he returned the favor, lifting her off her feet.

“Sorry, cher. Got a little busy in Jersey.” He stepped away, surveyed her. “Looking good, little sister.”

“You too, big brother,” she said.

The familiar man looked up from greeting Storm, met Logan’s eyes.

Logan knew that face. Remembered dust in the air. Remembered demanding: What's my name? Remembered the forced calm of his reply: Your name is Logan.

"Bet you don't remember me," the man in the hall with the familiar face said.

"You were there - at that island." Logan felt his heart rate kick-up. He felt like gears in him were grinding into motion, as if his life might finally expand past the day he lost who he was. Was this man the key after all these years?

"It's been awhile," said the man. "You can call me Gambit."

"You know about me," Logan said. He grabbed this Gambit's shoulders and slammed him against the paneled wall.

"I'm going to have to ask that you stop shoving me into walls," Gambit said. "Unless you mean something by it."

"What do you know?" He slammed Gambit harder into the wood. "What do you know about me?"

"That's enough, Logan." Storm's voice came with Storm's hand on his shoulder. "Stop it!"

"I ain't going nowhere, homme," Gambit said, raising his hands, asking for calm. He seemed almost fond.

Logan dropped his hands, forced himself to take a step back.

Gambit resettled his coat. "I'm sorry. I don't know much."

“I think Logan is the one who should be apologizing,” Storm said.

"Anything you know, anything is better than this blank in my brain," Logan said, as if Storm had not spoken.

""Shall we sit down and talk like we have some manners?"

"Come into the sitting room," Storm said, taking Gambit's arm and turning him that way. She shot a warning look at Logan. Don't hurt him. He's my friend. You'll regret it.

Logan put his hands up in brief surrender. He took a deep breath, and followed.

Gambit settled into a loveseat. Storm tucked herself in beside him. He put an arm around her and she leaned into him, but there was no heat in their embrace. They just seemed comfortable with each other. Logan could approve of that. Like all of them, Storm needed all the allies she could get.

Storm noticed his look. “I was in some trouble in my younger days and Remy looked after me,” she said.

“Now you’re all grown, maybe you should look after me.” Gambit spoke to Storm, but he was looking at Logan standing by the window.

Logan found an armchair and sat. He trusted Storm's judgment, wanted to trust this man, but would have to settle for seeking answers and testing them later. Maybe the Professor would sift through the guy's head if he asked.

“I can’t remember anything before the Island,” Logan said. “Nothing from my life.”

Something about that nothing tugged at him when he looked at Gambit. Could he be some companion of his earlier days?

Gambit wasted no time dashing Logan‘s hopes. “We met just about a day before you lost your memory.”

One single day of his life back. Logan closed his eyes, gut struck.

"You showed up in a casino in Bourbon St. where I was playing poker. You wanted me to take you to that island. I never got the whole story, just that you wanted revenge on the men who killed your woman. Stryker. Victor Creed. I think you'd just acquired the metal claws, though I could not say how or where."

Gambit smiled, rueful. "I blew you through a wall. Understand, I'd been a prisoner at that facility, and thought you were one of the bad guys who took me. Then I come out into the alley and you're doing your damnedest to kill Creed. He scampers. You and me fight. You win. Then you tell me you're going to kill the people I hate. What's not to love?

"I flew us up to the island the next night. I don't know the details of the fight, because you went in first while I found harbor for the plane. I get there and the reactors were falling down. You sent me off to help the other captives get out, and when I came back, your memory was gone. I was going to take you with me, but you got distracted by a dead woman, said you would make your own way. I let you."

Gambit shrugged. "That's all I know about you, for sure. I'm pretty certain you'd been up in Canada when your woman was killed, and you'd come to New Orleans from Las Vegas. Creed killed a friend of yours in the alley, a mutant - you called him John. We didn't play true confessions."

"That's it?" Logan said. He held back a growl of disappointment. The information Gambit had was almost insulting in its paltriness. The crash from that anxious high of being on the verge of unlocking 15 year old secrets to knowing little more than he had ten minutes ago squirmed in his gut.

“That’s all I know,” Gambit said. “I am sorry.”

More clues, however slight, that was something, Logan tried to tell himself. Think it out.

Canada made sense. He'd felt at home there in his wanderings.

John? Las Vegas? He could not place either, though he felt sure that he'd been to Vegas.

Creed was a name to stir anger, but he'd had issues with Sabretooth since losing his memory, so that meant nothing about his past.

"You wanted me to go with you and I said no. I went my own way," Logan said. He remembered that, as though through a haze. Those first few days had been all about instinct and reflex. His memories weren’t real good.

"You had a real hate on for Stryker and Creed, I can tell you that."

"I've got to - I got to think," Logan said, pushed up from the chair. He went out into the late afternoon sun, looked around him, and disappeared into the woods on the grounds. He needed to run. He needed to lose himself.

It was well after dinner when Logan let himself in through the French doors in the dark conservatory. Logan slipped through the desks and chairs and into the hall. The old, narrow stair at the end of the hall was supposed to be locked, but Logan had jiggered the mechanism months ago, and he made his way up to his room unseen.

He did not know what he meant to do. Part of him said jump on the bike, go to Vegas. But look for what? Someone named John who disappeared from the place 15 years ago? Who knows if he even came from there.

The only thing he could do...look up Stryker. Look up Victor Creed. Find out who they'd run with, what they'd been doing. Surely they would not have bothered with his lover if he had not meant something to them, or to her.

He couldn’t even picture her. Maybe if he had her name, the image of this woman would shimmer up in front of his mind’s eye like a fish rising into shallow water.

One thing he could do: corner Gambit and extract the background. There was a lot Gambit had not told him that afternoon, about the island and what went on there, about what they’d said and done before reaching the island. There must be something he remembered, something that could be teased from his memories and followed. He almost did not care whether he found his answers, only that he had a direction to chase in.

A shadow moved near his door. Logan whirled, claws jutting through his skin.

Gambit whirled away, and landed in a defensive stance just out of claw reach.

They both straightened at the same time.

Logan willed his claws back in and heaved a breath. Another. His nose filled with Gambit's scent, teasing and intoxicating and known.

This time, when he slammed Gambit into the wall, he angled in for a bruising kiss. Gambit took hold of his shoulders and dragged him closer. His mouth opened under Logan's, and Logan pressed the advantage of height and weight to hold onto him, to deepen the kiss, to rub against that long body.

Kid voices raised in argument around the corner, and Logan pulled his head back just enough to listen. The voices died away and Logan turned back to Gambit.

"Didn't know if you wanted to remember this," Gambit said.

“Don't be an idiot.”

Gambit dragged Logan in for another kiss. His hard-on pressed against Logan’s thigh. Logan shifted against him and eliminated any space between his body and Gambit’s, felt his own arousal grow heavy at the pressure and the heat, thought, bed. Now.

Logan fumbled for the doorknob to his room, latched onto it and shoved the door open, pulled Gambit through after him. He managed to take his hands off Gambit long enough to let him slip his shirt off, lose shoes, kick off jeans, silk boxers. His skin was tanned, muscle sculpted by use, not the gym, gaze direct and bold. No shyness there.

How he got his own clothes off, Logan couldn't say, just that he did, and then his hands closed on Gambit's hips. His mouth found Gambit’s neck. Agile fingers mapped his back, wound into his hair. Gambit shifted his weight and Logan found himself tumbling to the bed with him.

Logan pulled Gambit onto his chest, skimmed every centimeter of skin, from collarbone to nipple, ass to thighs, with big hands.

But Gambit would not remain still to be explored. Silken hair dragged over Logan’s collarbone, heated his skin. Gambit traversed his chest with mouth and teeth, sucking and kissing, mouthing and biting at the skin and muscle under him, as if he knew just the right trigger spots to pulse pleasure straight to Logan‘s groin.

Logan was absurdly aware of his touch. Where Gambit’s fingers and mouth had been, sensation hummed.

When he could not take it any longer, Logan rolled Gambit onto his back, under him. Relying on that weird unconscious knowledge that held onto skills and practical knowledge even while all his personal memories were long fled, Logan knew that Gambit could free himself without much trouble, that he did not need to be careful with him like with most of his lovers.

But Gambit let Logan spread his weight half over him, one muscular, hairy thigh pressing against his eager cock, with no protest or escape attempt. Logan ground his thigh down against Gambit’s arousal, got a raspy gabble of French in his ear, did it again. No words this time, just Gambit’s teeth hard at his collarbone, and Gambit pushed back, his own thigh shoving against Logan’s desperate cock.

They found a staccato rhythm, drove against each other like that until Logan shifted and brought their cocks together. Whether they both made that near-soundless groan, or just one of them, Logan could not tell.

They slid together, slipping on sweat and slicked cocks, Logan instinctively setting the pace, tuning his motions to Gambit's gasps and groans, making sure Gambit got all that he wanted before hunting down his own pleasure.

They caught fire near the same time, coming one after the other, kissing sloppy and eager while pleasure crested and crashed. Logan went boneless, more than half covering his partner. Gambit shoved at his shoulder and he shifted over to let him breathe.

“We did this before?” Logan said, on his back next to Gambit, sweaty and satisfied and steady as he hadn’t been since before Gambit arrived.

“You think?” Gambit said.

“So there were some things you didn’t tell me,” Logan said.

“Didn’t know if you wanted Storm knowing that detail,” Gambit said. He stretched and shifted onto his side. “I could tell you about the bike you left at the airport, or that you hate small planes.”

“No shit,” Logan muttered. He fished in the bedside table for a cigar.

Gambit propped his head on his hand,. “Hell, I could give you the license number on that bike, that do you any good.”

Logan stopped rummaging, looked over his shoulder. “You remember a license plate from 15 years ago?”

“I’m good with numbers,” Gambit said, with a slow smirk that was becoming all too familiar.

“I might have stolen it,” Logan said.

“Might have done,” Gambit said, with a yawn. “Hard to trace it now anyway. Other things you can look into.”

“Like what?” Logan said. There wasn’t enough that he could see in what Gambit had told him to let Sherlock Holmes get anywhere, much less a mutant like him who'd already struck out so many times.

A vague unease started to settle into his bones, and he reached for Gambit, to stroke the fine skin on his belly and kiss his neck until the calm came back to him. Gambit let himself be pulled closer, and put where Logan wanted him.

“People have long memories in Vegas. My people especially,” said Gambit, throat vibrating against Logan‘s mouth.

Logan bit at Gambit‘s collarbone, gentle and distracted. “What’re you saying?”

“Saying that there can’t be too many black mutants in Las Vegas 15 years ago. Black mutants that disappeared one day and never came back,” Gambit said. “Perhaps we should go ask.”

“You’re a genius.” With careful hands Logan put Gambit away from him and got to his feet, looked around for his pants. “We could leave tonight.”

“Hold on a minute,” Gambit said.

“What? Storm will understand. It‘s not like we’re not coming back.”

“I ain’t finished putting you through your paces,” Gambit said. “And if we get Storm on our side, she gets us there much faster in the jet.”

Logan grinned, the hope so rudely dispelled earlier now rushing back, and let himself be pulled back to the bed. “I guess we’ve got time for you to crack the whip.”

Gambit climbed atop Logan, situated himself across his hips. "Think we'll save the whips for another night."

Logan laughed. He pulled Gambit’s head down for a sweet kiss. “You going to stick with me?”

“Got to see what’s at the end of that road, homme,” Gambit said, ghosted a kiss over his mouth. “I got an itch of curiosity about you, myself. Can’t satisfy it, if I stay home.”

Gambit put a hand on Logan’s chest and pushed him back. Logan stretched out on the mattress and drew Gambit down to him.

A trail to follow and a partner to hunt beside him? Now that, Logan thought, that was a memory to look forward to.


End file.
